Okay actually I did tempt the gods this weekend by setting, lighting and enjoying a fire in my wood-burning stove!! Yes! An actual on-purpose fire that stayed contained in its intended place, locked safely behind a door where smoke could exit out the appropriate path (the chimney) Ladies and gents, I had my first fire! No adults, children, pets or woks were damaged in the process.
It has gotten EXTREMELY cold here this week with temperatures (with windchill, and oh what a windchill there is) dipping below -40 regularly. This means that my car GROANS at start up in the mornings and the windshield is in a permanent state of frost. I have developed super-human abilities that allow me to see and drive through a variety of frosts and manage to make it to school without incident! Most would just let their cars warm up for 20 mins but at -40 and gas at $1.66/L I'd rather just put my 20/20 vision to good use.
On the health front there are some new developments. It seems that I may be getting sick AGAIN *cough I blame Monika cough* as with every breath I take I hear a teeny whistle. So either I'm getting another chest cold or my last flu was so epic I blew a hole in my lung from coughing and am in fact dying a slow and painful death. I'm going with the latter.
School is going well, we are powering through math and doing some fun reading comprehension activities for language arts. We have a ton of standardized testing as well as report cards coming down the tube so it'll be crunch time to get as much curriculum covered as possible. Sadly the tests and the curriculum do not coordinate so there are concepts and topics on the tests that the kids simply haven't learned or been exposed to in depth so that disappoints me. As much as I'd like to be able to cover all the material they will be tested on, I don't like the idea of "teaching to the test" and I simply don't have enough hours in a day to cover in the months preceding a test what I need an entire year to take to ensure they learn. So it's a hard one.
Otherwise teaching with Mama is going well, we are doing a lot of planning and team teaching which we and the kids are really enjoying! We are working on probability right now which is a lot fun, tons of predicting and experimenting an testing predictions with hands on materials.
Anyways I have to nurse my dying lungs and take an Advil for my leg which has been bothering me the last couple of days (may also be related to my impending death). Until next time!
Mama's first trip to the Maquatua Inn - the finest in Wemindji's culinary offerings!
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